Australia’s 70 000-kilometre coastline is a scientist’s paradise. It offers immense coral reefs, craggy cliffs battered by Antarctic gales, penguin rookeries and man-eating crocodiles. And although five of every six Australians live near the shore, much of this vast coastline remains uninhabited and virtually unknown. There are two Australias, say marine scientists: the one where everyone lives, and the one where nobody lives, the four points on Australia’s compass.
THE EAST
MANY – perhaps most – Australians have never stood in a mangrove forest. It’s not hard to see why, even though mangroves line thousands of miles of the continent’s northern and eastern coasts. Mangroves are not the sort of place most people would choose for a casual stroll.
“Mangrove” is a generic term for what are essentially intertidal forests – trees and shrubs that have adapted to life with their roots awash in mud and salty or brackish water. A well-developed mangrove forest is not a simple stand of straight-trunked trees. Trunks and branches spider about in all directions, and a tangle of prop roots reaches as high as six metres above the mud. Even so, clambering about on the roots and swinging from branches often turns out to be safer than stepping on the bare mud below, which can be soft enough to swallow someone up to the waist. The tidal creeks where mangroves grow are also home to crocodiles, which helps make a forest trip less than perfectly relaxing.
Not surprisingly, then, the researchers who study mangroves – the “mangrovellists”, some call them – are a rather unusual breed. Most are compact and wiry, with weather-beaten faces that…
